Walker linked to Liberal company

By David Marr

DESPITE assurances that he had broken all links with the Liberal Party, Fairfax Media chairman Ron Walker remains the principal shareholder in a software company operated by the party.

Parakeelia Pty Ltd was set up in 1989 shortly after Mr Walker became Liberal Party treasurer. For the past decade the company has been developing and selling controversial Feedback software that allows MPs to collate and store information on their constituents.

Mr Walker holds 98 of Parakeelia's 100 shares "as trustee for the members … of the Liberal Party of Australia".

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The directors of the company include the party's federal director, Brian Loughnane, and his predecessor, Lynton Crosby.

"This is an oversight," Mr Walker said late last week. "This has happened inadvertently without my knowledge."

Mr Walker resigned from the Liberal Party in late 2002 when it was announced he was joining the board of John Fairfax.

"It was proper not to be compromised by politics," he said at the time. "It's better in a publishing business to be impartial."

As chairman of John Fairfax, he assured the annual general meeting of the company in November 2005: "I am an independent person … I have no relationship with the Liberal Party, both at officer level or at any other level whatsoever."

Mr Walker blames former party director Andrew Robb for the situation, saying Mr Robb, now the federal member for Goldstein, had assured him that all his connections to the party were revoked at the time he joined the Fairfax board.

"If I go to the trouble to resign from the Liberal Party and someone errs in their responsibility, it is unfortunate," Mr Walker said.

A spokesman for Mr Robb said: "We're not interested in getting into a tit for tat with Ron Walker."

Mr Loughnane said at the weekend that Mr Walker's ongoing link with Parakeelia "was an oversight by the (Liberal) party".

He said Parakeelia was simply part of the "technical operation" of the party and that Mr Walker "exercises no influence as a consequence of being a trustee and derives no benefit".

Parakeelia's Feedback software is bought by Coalition MPs, state and federal branches of the party and by the National Party of New Zealand.

The Labor Party uses similar Electrac software.

Mr Loughnane will talk to Mr Walker about withdrawing from Parakeelia in the next few days.